What Changes in the CD Version

[Fabfire]

DRG said:
Here is are the latest additions to the patch


50) The vehicle Load / Unload screen would not allow you to scroll around the map. FIXED

51) The game maps can now be scrolled in all directions using the up, down, left and right arrow keys. If accessed from the numeric keyboard Numlock must be OFF

52) AAA reaction fires has been tweaked a bit . If they are hidden they will fire at very short ranges only or if the to-hit is better than 9%. Therefore,- hidden tanks will not pop off at passing planes unless these spot them by flying close enough, or if the aircraft or Helo gets to a 9% to hit OR at 3 or so hexes, they will blaze away as the thing is too close.

53) There has been a slight adjustment upwards for spotting hidden vehicles when using vehicles with a Vision rating of 40 and above especially if the "hidden" tank fires

54) Spotting with TI ( vision 40+ ) decrease slightly with speed. You'll spot things a bit better if you are not moving at top speed

55) There have been slight alterations to the accuracy numbers for smoothbore guns. The length/calibre cals did not give accurate numbers with shorter barrelled smoothbores like the German L44 or the US M256 and the longer Russian barrels gave them slightly higher accuracy than reality. As well. Fire Control ( FC ) and Range Finder ( RF ) ratings were not quite giving the added benefit to higher end equipment that they should have so the formulas have been slightly altered to give greater benefit to the vehicles with the higher end equipment. Each of these factors, if overdone, have a HUGE effect on gameplay and we have endeavoured to strike a fair and balanced compromise.

Sometimes even slight changes can make a noticeable difference so we've been careful not to overdo it

Don

*Blimey!* That's exactly each and every whish I had! LOL

Great work, guys. I really appreciate it.

Fab

[Artur]

Gentlemen,

Can you foresee when the patch will be released? I would never urge you I would just like to know should I begin PBEM games now, or wait a little (a few days or 2-3 weeks the most) until the patch comes out.

You guys do a wonderful job with the patch .

Artur.

[DRG]

The patch will not be released for at least another two weeks while we run tests. There are a lot of changes we need time to test and as well there is also going to be another level of PBEM security added to the game that is less restrictive than the regular security and we need to test that ( as well as the other things )

So go ahead an play your PBEM, you'll have lots of time

Don

[Artur]

Thanks, and take your time.

Artur.

[Artur]

BTW. Are you considering to adjust the unit costs?

There are a few points described in this thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

The units with TI are just that much effective. Unit costs are for making battles more or less ballanced aren't they? It is not the case now .

Artur.

[DRG]

Here is the complete list of changes made to date


The Camo Workshops WinSPMBT ver1.02 Upgrade


The first 25 items contain the changes that were made to the game to create the Version 1.01 Upgrade which was the CD version. The remaining items are added to the patch to bring both the CD and the DL versions of the game up to v1.02. There will be only be ONE patch issued and it will upgrade BOTH game types.


1) Points were not correctly charged for elite or second-rate troops when bought by the human player -FIXED

2) The cost calculaton was done in floating point, leading to rounding down when e.g. a squad at 15 was revalued to 15.75 points, was reduced back to 15 when converted back to integer. Now rounds up to 16 before returning.

3) Combat sounds had short delays after them left over from the old DOS sound system which only played one track at a time. These have been removed, as well as reducing some delays on user messages appearing during combat sequences. Sounds should be quicker, and the delay when a unit was destroyed is gone.

4) A problem in XP which could cause a crash (and very rarely in Windows 98) when deleting formations on purchasing when the formation spanned 2 pages was fixed. Now when a formation is deleted, the entire list is recalculated.

5) Air weapons were not showing correctly in the scenario editor change weapons dialogue. The weapons list now shows all potential weapons, and since there was only room on the screen for 120 weapons we have added 3 "pages" accessed by entering negative numbers as the page number. -1 for page 1, -2 for weapons 120+ and -3 for weapond 200+.

6) Casualties for paratroops landing has been revised. Small one man teams should have less casualties on landing, as should vehicles especially the "airborne APC" class. Ammo containers no longer explode when dropped

7) Numerous OOB fixes - UK , Netherlands, India, and east Germany have had more work that some but a number of nations using 'Carl Gustaves" had them classed incorrectly in the weapons list and those have been corrected. There were a few other minor issued that resulted in all OOB's being point recalculated.

8) I new Scenarios added #107 Raid into Honduras 1986

9) 2 Scenarios reworked . Scenario #1 has been extensively revised and sceanrio #28 has had minor alterations

10) Game Options master Control Programme now exposes 2 variables that were only available through INI file editing.

A] Graphics delay is the minimum wait time between screen redraws,
and
B] Unit |Move delay controls the time units wait between multiple hex moves.

11) Game Messages Delay has been changed to work in roughly 1/4 second intervals and not 1/2 second. In addition, a user-editable modifier has been added to the INI file [game] section for those who require to radically aler the base messages delay level.

12) Instructions have been added to the sub folder of \Game Data\Sounds for people who may encounter sound problems on their computers when using the MP3 sound files in the game. We did not include WAV files as comparable quality WAV's would have added 144MB to the amount of HD space used by the game but we have included step by step instructions for those few players who may encounter dificulties

13) There have been a few minor alterations to some vehicle SHP files

14) a few photos used by the OOB's have been revised

15) a correction has been made to the Sounds.INI file that prevented the PPsh sound FX from playing in the game

16) two in game help texts have been revised

17) The game manual has been corrected to give you more information on the additional controls added to the GameOptions Misc page

18) UAV now considerd high flyers, above rifle and AAMG height and require proper AA guns and SAM to engage.

19) Bugs with Allied units showing the wrong experience level and ID tag were fixed.

20) Bug with points not being correctly charged for unit experience and morale levels fixed.

21) Bug where pressing previous page after a formation was deleted in the purchase screen occasionally crashed the PC fixed.

22) Bug where having more than 23 of a particular unit type simultaneously available caused the units to be unpurchaseable fixed. Now if more than 23 of a type are available att he first time, only the first 23 are displayed rather than declaring a formation invalid.

23) In the advance or delay with the traditional victory hex clusters, occasionaly these were displayed off the bottom of narow maps under 40 hexes tall. -FIXED

24) Bug where pressing escape in the map save screen after changing your mind on the selected save slot -FIXED

25) A bug whereby units in a campaign which used ARENA or VIRSS did not have the shots restored -FIXED


The following changes were added after the CD realease to make this the 1.02 patch...


26) Iraqi Picklist altered to give a more accurate " insurgent" type force composition for the AI. A further revised OOB

27) NVA Picklist altered to give a few armoured vehicles to the AI once in awhile while US forces are still engaged plus added APC infantry after the USA departed

28) There was a bug when the AI was buying 1/50th of the force value as mines in defence then 20% more if it was a river crossing or beach assault. - in campaign battles only. -FIXED

29) added "Dragons teeth" to hex mouse-over, if DTare in the hex and added "Mines" to hex mouse over if mines detected in a hex

30) AI was sometimes deploying units in lakes. FIXED

31) A "mission" button has been added to the deployment screen ( Useful if you saved during deploy, and came back 2 weeks later and forgot your mission)

31) "In scenarios, if the "reaction turn" is set to "turn 98" units will hold in place for the entire game and not counter attack to re-take V-Hexes. This includes both advance and assault and delay and defend scenarios"

32) Merkava MICV "Nemer", USMC "EFV" , British/Dutch Scarab, USA desert M3a3, German Dingo and Fennek Icons added

33) AA radars will now spot planes and helos at ranges beyond the firing unit's ground vision rating

34) The list of a campaign core force units on the upgrade/fix/review screen between battles (if allowed to refit) - was indexing incorrectly - in large cores you only saw 2-3 pages becasue the bug was skipping pages in the middle and showing first, second and last generally- FIXED

35) There were occasions when some maps said "town" or "city" etc, but none appeared or only a few villages seemed to appear. FIXED

36) Changes made to "Carry capacity" and "Carry cost" did not stick when changed in the editor. FIXED

37) Visibility can now be changed from the "View Map" screen. Previously this could only be changed before starting a battle. This allows players a second chance to do this while setting up a game ( for PBEM for example ) and now allows campaign players the option of adjusting the visibility during campaign games

38) There was a minor bug in the "View Map" screen where pressing ESC would not allow you to back out of that function without selecting a map number first. FIXED-- Pressing ESC while in the "Change Map ID" subscreen of the "View Map" screen will now properly exit that screen without having to enter a map ID number first

39) Updated South African and USMC AI Picklist

40) There was a bug that was preventing units from clearing mines after a save. FIXED

41)Thermal imaging sights ( TI ) will now have some LOS blocked by a fire hex (usually 2 or more fire hexes are needed for significant LOS degradation), and heavy smoke reduces LOS penetration very slightly, causing some "shadows". usually 5-6 hexes of freshly laid (full) smoke is needed to reduce TI penetration level slightly. Fire and smoke hexes do NOT reduce radar AA Fire Control LOS against aerial targets.

42) There was a difference between the way User Campaigns and Generated Campaigns allowed you to change ( upgrade ) units . This has now been standardized for both campaign types. The Unit list menu is now an "active" menu for both campaign types allowing you to select units to change from there

43) Mike Torrance's Campaign "Silver Lions" has been added

44) There was a bug where flak units firing at enemy aircraft increased the kill count with every hit even though no kills were made. FIXED

45) A bug where a fire mission could not be cancelled has been fixed.

46) A Bug where player 2 in a scenario could see player 1's troops during the pre game bombardment, if player one was the AI fixed.

47) A safety feature has been added to the scenario editor. The sceanrio editor will now auto saves to slot 999 on exit with title "AUTO SAVED SCENARIO"

48) The mini map was not centering on the location of the unit in use on the main map. FIXED

49) Vehicles and artillery pieces "dug in" in a hex showing a sandbagged revetments can now regain dug in status one turn after entering. They are not restricted to their original revetments and can enter any "sandbagged" hex to regain hull down status

50) The vehicle Load / Unload screen would not allow you to scroll around the map. FIXED

51) The game maps can now be scrolled in all directions using the up, down, left and right arrow keys. If accessed from the numeric keyboard Numlock must be OFF

52) AAA reaction fires has been tweaked a bit . If they are hidden they will fire at very short ranges only or if the to-hit is better than 9%. Therefore,- hidden tanks will not pop off at passing planes unless these spot them by flying close enough, or if the aircraft or Helo gets to a 9% to hit OR at 3 or so hexes, they will blaze away as the thing is too close.

53) There has been a slight adjustment upwards for spotting hidden vehicles when using vehicles with a Vision rating of 40 and above especially if the "hidden" tank fires

54) Spotting with TI ( vision 40+ ) decrease slightly with speed. You'll spot things a bit better if you are not moving at top speed

55) There have been slight alterations to the accuracy numbers for smoothbore guns. The length/calibre cals did not give accurate numbers with shorter barrelled smoothbores like the German L44 or the US M256 and the longer Russian barrels gave them slightly higher accuracy than reality. As well. Fire Control ( FC ) and Range Finder ( RF ) ratings were not quite giving the added benefit to higher end equipment that they should have so the formulas have been slightly altered to give greater benefit to the vehicles with the higher end equipment. Each of these factors, if overdone, have a HUGE effect on gameplay and we have endeavoured to strike a fair and balanced compromise. Sometimes even slight changes can make a noticeable difference so we've been careful not to overdo it

56) An additional PBEM security type has been introduced. "Basic" security will not kill a game ( in the most common cases ) if it detects something wrong. It will allow players to play on two machines ( on a laptop then back home on the desktop for example ) and it will not stop a game if both players are using different OOB sets. This is "Secuity lite" for those players who trust their opponent and just want password protection to prevent peaking and / or wants to play at work and at home and cannot with the more stringent regular PBEM security. However, it will NOT allow you to rename the save slot number of the PBEM. If you do it will kill the game.

[DRG]

Artur said:
BTW. Are you considering to adjust the unit costs?

There are a few points described in this thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

The units with TI are just that much effective. Unit costs are for making battles more or less ballanced aren't they? It is not the case now .



It's under consideration ATM

Don

Artur.

[JaM]

Nice list. Cant wait for it... Keep up good work!!!

[Artur]

DRG said:

It's under consideration ATM

Don

Wow!!! Need I say more?

Artur.

[WBWilder]

Where will we find the patch, once it is offered? I looked though the Shrapnel website and found no places for patches.

WB